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Why Microsoft is a national security threat (www.theregister.com)
submitted 2 years ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[–] 56 points 2 years ago (8 children)

Once the government switched to Linux en-masse, Microsoft will have no leverage whatsoever, no solution they can possibly propose will beat free software.

LibreOffice is totally adequate for most government jobs.

It's not like there's no precedent, Germany's government already switched to Linux

The only possible way to generate money is through the use of online document editing services, but Google Docs pretty much cornered the market here.

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  • [–] 80 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    I just want to clarify that a german state switched. Not Germany.

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  • [–] 11 points 2 years ago*

    And, IIRC, it's just a trial to see if it will work.

    Edit: I should have read the article linked in a comment above...

    "As spotted by The Document Foundation, the government has apparently finished its pilot run of LibreOffice and is now announcing plans to expand to more open source offerings."

    "In 2021, the state government announced plans to move 25,000 computers to LibreOffice by 2026. At the time, Schleswig-Holstein said it had already been testing LibreOffice for two years."

    So, it seems the trial may be over and they are migrating for good.

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  • [–] 18 points 2 years ago (3 children)

    I'm honestly surprised the us govt hasn't developed their own pos locked downed Linux os.

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  • [–] 4 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Back in 2000, there was something like that for the kernel with SELinux (Security-Enhanced Linux). Which continues to live in various distributions' kernels. Not a full O/S though, and not generally regarded as a PoS.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago

    I always found it to be a real PITA... It felt like a parallel system to file permissions, which meant I had two things to configure instead of one and I never really saw the purpose. It seemed like it could be more granular than the default, but if it did anything more than that I never learned about it

    Granted, I'm a dev, not an admin. I go back and configure the firewall after I shut it off because it was in my way... Eventually

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  • [–] 7 points 2 years ago*

    France is here a better example. The Gendarmerie has its own distribution based on Ubuntu called GendBuntu. The state developed Tchap, a messaging system based on matrix. And many are looking to Linux to simply cut the cost like the french army.

    Side note: The app Fedilab has its package name based on the french government open source projects (fr.gouv.etalab.mastodon).

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  • [–] 3 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    They can also just use Office online. That should be good enough to get people to switch without a huge disruption in efficiency.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago (1 child)

    You underestimate how much people rely on Excel macros.

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  • [–] 3 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Yeah, but there are alternatives, so it at least provides a smaller change than completely switching to something else.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago (1 child)

    Yeah but years of macros over macros that keep the business running won't be easily ported to a new solution.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Sure, and being forced to redo it is probably a good thing in the long run.

    Maybe they'll get a developer to build it into a reusable product instead of relying on Jim in accounting to fix the macros to get it working after an update. Or maybe they'll realize they could get the same result with a pivot table and clever formulas.

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  • [+] -8 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    Unfortunately, LibreOffice is still garbage. Microsoft it miles ahead in its apps compared to the Linux equivalent. There isn't even a good OneNote alternative on Linux.

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  • [–] 4 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    What is specifically broken or missing from LibreOffice?

    As for OneNote alternatives, this one does a pretty good job: https://xournalpp.github.io/

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago

    Many things. The biggest issue, I'd say, is the unability to create tables in Calc. This severely limits productivity.

    And I use both OneNote and Xournal++, and the latter isn't really a replacement to the former, save for a few features.

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